Elder Advocates of Alberta Societyhttps://elderadvocates.ca
Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:50:36 +0000en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.36123105UK Child Being Denied Treatmenthttps://elderadvocates.ca/uk-child-being-denied-treatment/
Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:47:07 +0000http://elderadvocates.ca/?p=7578Tafida Raqeeb is the latest case of a UK child being denied treatment abroad.
Tafida Raqeeb has been diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation, a rare condition which causes the blood vessels to have abnormal connections between the arteries and veins.
Tafida RaqeebTafida had a brain bleed on February 9 that has left her in coma in the Royal London Hospital where the doctors claim that there is no hope.

Doctors in Genoa, Italy state that they have an expertise in this condition, they are willing to treat Tafida, and “they suggest there is a good chance she will emerge from the coma she is in,” according to Ron Liddle of The Sun (a UK newspaper). But the Royal London Hospital is refusing to let the parents take Tafida to Genoa.

“The view of the doctors there is that they can do nothing more for her and that it would be better for her to be ¬left to die,” Liddle writes.

Some people have compared this case to Charlie Gard whose parents fought unsuccessfully to move him to an American hospital for experimental treatment.

Liddle argues that the decision by the Royal London Hospital is grotesque, arrogant and pig-headed. He states:
I can understand doctors telling Mohammed and Shelina [the parents] there is nothing more that they can do for their little girl. What is beyond belief — beyond ¬imagination — is that they would insist on keeping the child there to die when there is genuine hope she might be cured.

It is all terribly similar to the case of Ashya King, an eight-year-old lad who had a brain tumour and was being treated at a hospital in Southampton.

The treatment he was receiving, his parents feared, threatened to cause grave brain damage and they instead wanted him to be treated via proton therapy in Prague.

The hospital said: “No, he stays here.” And so the parents, Brett and Naghemeh King, were forced to abduct the lad, sparking a Europe-wide manhunt. They were arrested in Spain?.?.?.?where Ashya also received treatment.

Five years later, he is cured. Free from cancer. No brain damage. The parents were right. The doctors were horribly wrong. Our medical professionals are, by and large, brilliant. But there is sometimes a grotesque arrogance and pigheadedness about them.

There are about two-hundred unfilled positions at nursing homes across the province of New Brunswick.
In one year, the New Brunswick government recorded more than a dozen allegations of staff physically or verbally abusing elderly residents inside nursing homes.
The cases include incidents where staff members were suspended or lost their jobs for physical violence, swearing or yelling.

The details are found in heavily redacted copies of major incident reports, obtained through right to information legislation.
But a CBC News investigation has found the public is allowed to know little about cases of abuse inside nursing homes in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The provincial Department of Social Development and a resident’s family members are notified about abuse cases, according to the New Brunswick Nursing Home Association, which oversees nursing homes.
But it isn’t the association’s job to tell the public about these cases, executive director Jodi Hall said.
“We feel like we’re doing everything that we are obligated and regulated to do.”

The New Brunswick government is involved in those investigations, but doesn’t publicize the details either.
The Department of Social Development declined an interview request for this story.
The government doesn’t publicize abuse cases for “various reasons,” including to protect residents’ privacy
and the integrity of the investigation, Anne Mooers, a spokesperson, wrote in an emailed statement.

Jodi Hall, executive director of the New Brunswick Nursing Home Association, says the organization isn’t required to tell the media about cases of abuse in nursing homes. (CBC)Hall said abuse is rare inside the province’s 67 licensed nursing homes.
But determining exactly how often residents are abused by staff, and the outcome of those cases, can be challenging.

FOUL LANGUAGE AND PHYSICAL ABUSE.

Mark Donald Roy was convicted of assault in 2016, according to provincial court and the RCMP.
The assault happened on Aug. 22, 2015, the same day Roy was working as a resident attendant at the Campbellton Nursing Home.
The nursing home suspended Roy and then fired him a few days later.
The incident is detailed in an arbitration decision that upheld Roy’s firing and in a major incident report obtained by CBC News.
Roy and another employee were tending to a patient who could be aggressive at times.Roy’s co-worker witnessed Roy’s behaviour and reported it to authorities.
She told an arbitrator that Roy was angry at another resident attendant, who gave the patient a fleet enema late in the day, causing the patient to soil themselves.

Roy suggested they leave the patient dirty, according to his co-worker’s testimony. She insisted they had to clean the patient.
As they were cleaning up, Roy was using foul language.“Lay down you old son of a whore or I’ll knock your head off,” he allegedly said.

Every older person has the right to live free from the fear of abuse.

Co-worker worried for patient’s safety

The Campbellton Nursing Home, pictured in this file photo, reported a case of verbal and physical abuse on Aug. 22, 2015.
His co-worker warned Roy to “stop and relax because he was going to hurt the patient.”
But as he put the patient’s T-shirt on, she said she feared he might rip the patient’s head off “or break his arm.”
Nursing home policy required staff to use a mechanical lift when moving the patient.
Instead, Roy grabbed the patient by the shoulder and threw them in a geriatric chair, his co-worker testified.
The brakes were off, but she managed to stick her foot out to stop the chair from moving before the patient could fall to the floor.
Roy declined an interview request from CBC News.
Arbitrator Michel Doucet wrote that Roy failed to live up to the trust placed in him.

Registry of Elder Abuse needed

“The words and actions of [Roy] towards patient X were demeaning, humiliating and unprofessional,” he wrote.
“This kind of attitude is unacceptable and constitutes abuse.”

WAKEUP CALL

The administrator of the Campbellton Nursing Home described the abuse as “heart-wrenching,” and something that was “way beyond anything that we could comprehend.”
“It was probably a wake-up call that it could actually occur in our home,” Ken Murray said in an interview.
Hall described the details as “disgusting” but said the nursing home took “the absolute correct action”in reporting the abuse.
When she heard about the case, seniors advocate Cecile Cassista described it as “appalling.”

Cecile Cassista, executive director of the Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights, wants the public to know more about abuse in nursing homes. (CBC)She said details of abuse in nursing homes should be public.
“Quite frankly, I was shocked, because normally you hear these incidents in other provinces,” said Cassista, who is the executive director of the Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights.
“You don’t hear the magnitude of what was going on in New Brunswick.”

Cassista often fields complaints of abuse. But families don’t always know where to go to report it.
Sometimes, they’re afraid to complain for fear their loved one may be evicted from a home, she said.
“How many more are there out there that the families are not coming forward and reporting?”

GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATES CASES

New Brunswick’s Department of Social Development declined an interview request for this story. Even though the government licenses and inspects nursing homes, it doesn’t own or operate them.
Under the Family Services Act, the Department of Social Development is required to “investigate and address” all reports of abuse or neglect of adults with disabilities and seniors.
If there’s enough evidence, the department will launch an “adult protection” investigation, led by a social worker.
If the staff member is found to be “abusive or neglectful,” that person is disciplined by the nursing home association.

The government couldn’t provide statistics on how many people at nursing homes have lost their jobs because they abused patients.And even though government investigates, there’s no trace of the investigations on the nursing home inspections shared online by government.

CHECKLIST MISSING DETAILS

Those inspection reports offer a checklist of standards, indicating whether the nursing home passed or failed each standard.
But they don’t explain the reasons behind each infraction.
For example, more than half the nursing homes in New Brunswick have been flagged for not properly reporting major incidents at least once since 2014.
That could range from a power outage to something more serious, such as abuse or a suicide attempt.
The nursing home association agrees the reports should have more detail.
“We’d love to see an element of risk attached to them so they are better understood by everyone,” Hall said.
Adapted CBC News, New Brunswick, October 26, 2017

]]>7562“Life Protecting Power of Attorney”https://elderadvocates.ca/life-protecting-power-of-attorney/
Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:02:37 +0000http://elderadvocates.ca/?p=7555Today I spoke with a woman who is the Power of Attorney for her 89 year-old aunt, who is currently in a Toronto hospital. The niece called EPC because she is upset about the lack of care that her Aunt is receiving.

Her Aunt went to the hospital a few weeks ago with pneumonia. Her doctor decided to do nothing for her. The doctor said:
“she’s not going to get better”
The doctor pressured the niece to have her Aunt sedated and dehydrated to death.

Her niece demanded another doctor and insisted on treatment. Her Aunt is now clear from the pneumonia.

Her Aunt is recovering but the hospital continues to pressure her niece to have her Aunt sedated and dehydrated to death. The only reason her niece could think of why they are doing this is that her Aunt is 89. Her niece said:

“she doesn’t have cancer, she doesn’t have any life-threatening condition.”

I urged the niece to keep defending her Aunt’s right to receive treatment and care.

I consider this to be elder abuse and discrimination. What makes it worse is that the abuse and discrimination seems to be institutionalized.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) sells the Life Protecting Power of Attorney to protect you.

The Life Protecting Power of Attorney states your wishes and enables your power of attorney to make medical decisions on your behalf. It protects you from euthanasia and assisted suicide and it defines the treatment/care decisions that you want in the event that you are unable to make medical decisions yourself

The Life Protecting Power of Attorney gives you the piece of mind that EPC will help you if your expressed wishes are ignored or if a hospital or doctor pressures or attempts to impose medical treatment or care decisions upon you.
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]]>755587% Accurate Alzheimer’s Testhttps://elderadvocates.ca/87-accurate-alzheimers-test/
Mon, 12 Aug 2019 19:39:50 +0000http://elderadvocates.ca/?p=7543What does an 87% accurate Alzheimer’s test mean? Not much without positive predictive value.What does it mean to say that a new test is 87% accurate?
I think most journalists writing about a paper published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia could not satisfactorily answer that question – about a statistic they repeatedly quoted in stories about that paper.

The answer is: Not much, if you don’t take positive predictive value into account.
And again, most journalists writing about the study won’t know what this means either.

The BBC called it “a major step forward in developing a blood test to predict the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.”

I’ve often warned readers to head for the hills if anyone promises a “simple blood test.” Are you in the hills yet? Because Reuters reported, “Study paves way for simple blood test to predict Alzheimer’s.” While there were caveats at the very end of the story, who at Reuters is responsible for this simplistic headline?

Other stories called it “a major breakthrough.” One stated definitively that “A simple blood

Blood Test

test can predict Alzheimer’s Disease” while another said “Alzheimer’s blood test not far away.” I’m not sure that either news story should make the claim it made at this point in time.

Now let’s get to the analysis of the claims.
” Excerpt:
The media coverage was broadly accurate, but none reported the positive predictive value of the test. This reduces the impressive sounding 87% accurate figure to around the 50% level, depending on the prevalence assumptions, giving the test the same predictive value as a coin toss.
This important information should have been highlighted to avoid overstating the utility of the test on its own.

In a HypeWatch column on MedPage Today, John Gever writes, “Another Dementia Blood Test Oversold.” Excerpts:
Only about 10% of patients of patients with MCI convert to clinical dementia per year. With nearly 30% of positive results false (remember, the specificity was 71%) as well as 15% of negative results false, most of the positive results in such a group will be false.

Yes, it’s time once again for a tutorial in positive predictive values. If we have 100 MCI patients and a 10% conversion rate, then 10 of them will develop dementia. These are the true positives. There will be 90 true negatives — the ones who don’t convert.
But with a specificity of 71%, the test will falsely identify 29% of the 90 true negatives, or 26, as positive. Meanwhile, with a false negative rate of 15%, only nine (rounding up from 8.5) of the 10 true positives will be correctly identified.
That’s 26 false positive results against nine correctly positive. That’s useless in a clinical setting. In fact, it’s worse than useless, since the false-negative results will expose patients to unnecessary clinic visits and treatments, and generate anxiety for them and their families.

But here’s lead author Abdul Hye from King’s College London in the press release: “We now have a set of 10 proteins that can predict whether someone with early symptoms of memory loss, or mild cognitive impairment, will develop Alzheimer’s disease within a year, with a high level of accuracy.”

]]>7543Alberta Mental Health Act Unconstitutionalhttps://elderadvocates.ca/alberta-mental-health-act-unconstitutional/
Mon, 12 Aug 2019 19:21:19 +0000http://elderadvocates.ca/?p=7530A patient at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre who was detained under the Mental Health Act has successfully challenged the constitutionality of the law. Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Kristine Eidsvik ruled Wednesday that sections of the act infringe on the Charter. Alberta now has 1 year to fix its Mental Health Act after court rules it violates basic rights. An Alberta Justice has ruled six sections of the law to be unconstitutional after reviewing the case of a man who was detained 9 months and medicated against his will.

A court has ruled sections of Alberta’s Mental Health Act unconstitutional after reviewing the case of a Calgary man confined to hospital for more than nine months and medicated without his consent.

The decision, issued Wednesday by Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Kristine Eidsvik, will likely have significant impacts on health care in Alberta.

Eidsvik gave the Alberta legislature 12 months to overhaul the act to bring it in line with the Charter.
Eidsvik wrote the man “suffered multiple breaches of his fundamental rights to life, liberty and security protected by Section 7 of the Charter, was arbitrarily detained in breach of Section 9, and was not given appropriate notice of the reason for his detention or his right to legal counsel.”

The case concerns an Indigenous man in his 40s, identified as J.H. to preserve his privacy. J.H. was detained against his will at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre under the Mental Health Act in September 2014 after being admitted for another medical issue.

J.H. was the victim of a hit and run earlier that year and required hospitalization for several months. While in hospital, he lost his apartment and was homeless when it came time to discharge him.
In early September, an outreach team brought J.H. back to Foothills after he began to experience complications from his injuries. J.H. underwent surgery, but was improving after 20 days and wanted to be discharged.
Instead, on Sept. 25, 2014, J.H. was certified under the Mental Health Act, legislation that allows doctors to detain under certain circumstances people they suspect are suffering from mental illness.

Doctors said J.H. was “disoriented, (lacked) insight into the seriousness of his medical condition, (stated he) wants to leave hospital” and had an “unsteady gait.” J.H. had no prior history of mental illness.

J.H.’s initial admission certificate, which was later renewed, allowed the hospital to hold him for one month. He was only released in May 2015, after successfully appealing his detention to the court.

J.H. and his lawyers challenged the constitutionality of the act.

Eidsvik found multiple issues with how J.H. was detained. His renewal certificates were “incomplete or inadequate,” and neither J.H. nor his family were ever given written notices explaining why he was being held. Further, Eidsvik said AHS staff failed to tell J.H. that he had a right to seek legal advice.

J.H. was treated against his will with psychiatric medications which were not “medically required,” the judge said.

Eidsvik went on to rule six sections of the Mental Health Act unconstitutional.

Specifically, Eidsvik recommended the Act’s criteria for detaining someone be revised, and suggested the health care system add new safeguards to improve patients’ rights.
“This could include requiring the patient advocate to meet with each patient upon detention (or so soon thereafter if the patient is unwell at detention) to advise them of their rights and provide the written information required,” she wrote.Salimah Janmohamed, the lawyer who represented J.H., said the current system allows health-care professionals to detain people under the Mental Health Act with little oversight.

She said: “They may have looked at it as, ‘Here’s a person who has gone through all this stuff, and needs some time to recuperate.’ But that’s being paternalistic in many ways. You can’t just tell somebody you’re not allowed to go if the person wants to go.”“You have a system that’s operated by doctors who are trying to do the job of lawyers,” she added. “They’re trying to make decisions that will impact the liberties of an individual.”

Janmohamed added that the government was not able to produce any statistics on how many people are detained on mental health certificates.

Spokespeople for both the Ministry of Justice and Solicitor General and AHS said they are reviewing the decision.

Ontario must increase funding and staffing at the province’s nursing homes to help prevent future serial killers from harming the most vulnerable, the final report into former nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s crimes recommends.
And nursing homes must limit their use of temp agency nurses and improve how medication is stored and tracked.
Those are just some of the 91 recommendations made by Justice Eileen Gillese in her four-volume report, stemming from the Public Inquiry into the Safety and Security of Residents in the Long-term Care Homes System.

“We cannot assume that because Wettlaufer is behind bars, the threat to the safety and security of those receiving care in the long-term care system has passed,” Gillese said in her public remarks today in Woodstock, Ont., where Wettlaufer committed most of her crimes.
“People are now worried about whether the long-term care system can safely provide care for their loved ones and for themselves as they age.”
Wettlaufer was a nurse in the province’s nursing homes and, at the end of her career, a home-care nurse.
She committed her crimes from 2007 to 2016, mainly at Caressant Care nursing home in Woodstock, Ont. Her killings would not have come to light had she not confessed.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer is escorted from the courthouse in Woodstock, Ont., on Jan. 13, 2017. In January, 2018, she confessed to at least one more assault on a patient in her care. (Dave Chidley/ Canadian Press)
“There is no simple ‘fix’ in terms of avoiding similar tragedies in the future,” Gillese said.“The offences were a result of systemic vulnerabilities in the long-term care system and not the failures of any individual or organization within it. Systemic issues demand systemic responses.”
Gillese’s recommendations focus on how to prevent, deter and detect health-care serial killers, as well as how to create enough awareness about the possibility that a health-care practitioner could be harming patients.
“While the long-term care system is strained, it is not broken,” Gillese said, adding that the regulatory regime that governs the system and the people who work within it provide a “solid foundation” from which to address the systemic issues.The recommendations

Gillese’s recommendations will take political will and money. Among them:
• The ministry of Long-Term Care should conduct a study to determine adequate staffing levels on day, evening and night shifts — and report on that study by July 31, 2020.
• Increase funding for staffing as determined by that study. At times, Wettlaufer was the only nurse working on a night shift, overseeing 99 patients with no oversight.
• Increase the number of registered nurses and registered practical nurses in long-term care homes.
• Limit the use of temp-agency nurses, who go into long-term care homes with little knowledge of the residents and procedures, to fill staffing holes. Wettlaufer worked as an agency nurse when she tried to kill a patient in a Paris, Ont., nursing home in 2015.
• Give grants ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 per long-term care home, depending on the size, to improve the infrastructure around medication, including how it is stored and tracked. That could include installing glass doors or windows onto medication rooms, installing security cameras in rooms where medication is stored or hiring a staff pharmacist. Wettlaufer herself told inquiry lawyers in an interview that glass doors on medication rooms would have made accessing insulin more difficult.
• Give long-term care homes more flexibility to use funds to pay for a broad spectrum of staff, including porters or pharmacists.
• Increase funding for training, education and professional development for everyone who provides care to residents in nursing homes.
• Make free counselling services available for two years to Wettlaufer’s lone surviving victim, the victims’ families and their loved ones.
Ontario’ Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton said later Wednesday that the province will act on the first two recommendations of Justice Eileen Gillese’s 91 recommendations to fix long-term care immediately.

Government responds

The government will review the long-term care system and will spend the next year acting on the recommendations contained in the report. It will deliver an update on its progress next year, as requested by Gillese.
That review will come with new funding for the province’s long-term care facilities.
“This will be a government-wide approach. It will not be limited to one ministry,” Fullerton said.
The province will also provide free counselling for the next two years for Wettlaufer’s surviving victim and the family and loved ones of her victims, Fullerton said.
“Today is a solemn day, and I want to acknowledge the pain and the trauma and the impact this has had in the province,” Fullerton said. “To the families, I want to say, your loved ones mattered, they had meaning, and they will make a difference.”

More robust investigations

Gillese recommends the College of Nurses of Ontario, the profession’s regulatory body, educate its members about the possibility of health care serial killers, and encourage nurses to work in long-term care homes.
The Office of the Chief Coroner is asked to redesign how it records patient deaths and to create a more robust investigation process for deaths, and to increase the number of death investigations it conducts in long-term care homes.
The coroner’s office should also train staff within the homes on how to assess whether a resident’s death is outside of the norm or “sudden and unexpected.”
During the course of the inquiry, the commission heard that some coroners thought no death in a nursing home was “sudden and unexpected” because of the complex health needs of residents, and therefore didn’t prompt any investigations.
Gillese didn’t touch on the role the Ontario Nurses Association, the union that represents nurses, played in the system. During the inquiry, there was a lot of testimony about ONA’s role in grieving Wettlaufer’s suspensions and eventual firing. Gillese said the union’s role was outside the scope of her report.

One nurse

Gillese dedicates her report to Wettlaufer’s victims and their loved ones, saying “they serve as a catalyst for real and lasting improvements to the care and safety of all those in Ontario’s long-term care system,” she said. “Your pain, loss and grief are not in vain.”
To the nurses who work in long-term care homes, Gillese says, “In opening our eyes to the one nurse who harmed, we must not forget the work of the many who are a credit to their profession.”
•Survivor of serial killer nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer speaks out
The two-year inquiry was launched in August 2017 to look at the events that led to Wettlaufer’s offences and the contributing factors that allowed the crimes to happen, and to make recommendations to prevent similar crimes.
The report examined how Wettlaufer, a nurse at several long-term care facilities in southwestern Ontario, was able to access lethal doses of insulin to kill her patients, to steal opioids to feed her own addiction and to continue being employed despite numerous reported flaws in her work.
She committed her crimes between 2007 and 2016, with most of the murders happening at Caressant Care nursing home in Woodstock, a city about 140 kilometres southwest of Toronto.
Wettlaufer quit her nursing job in 2016, checked herself into a psychiatric hospital and confessed her crimes.
She pleaded guilty in 2017 to eight counts of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
Wettlaufer, who is now 52, is serving eight concurrent life sentences, with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Caressant Care said Wednesday afternoon everyone in the long-term care system must work to restore public confidence.
“Caressant Care will carefully review these recommendations and may provide further comment as appropriate,” the home said in a statement.
“However, due to the sensitivity of this issue and, out of respect for the families, residents and staff who have been deeply impacted by this tragedy, we ask for privacy.”

This is for all the lonely people, thinking that life has passed them by: Don’t Give Up…” sang the pop group America in their 1974 number five hit song. Today, however, more and more doctors say to lonely people, “If you think life has passed you by, we’ll help kill you.”

As we get older, it is normal to have regrets, or miss the exuberance of youth. The elderly can often experience reflective, sometimes melancholy moods. With age come various physical limitations and pains.

It often takes a loss of our youthful self-reliance to foster introspection necessary to recognize the most important things in life. “Teach me to number my days,” says the ancient proverb, “that I may gain a heart of wisdom.”

But today, instead of addressing the stages of life and its challenges, more and more doctors, where euthanasia is legal, are willing to end life –for no physical reason.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition explained.

“I have significant experience with people as they approach death, and it is natural to become unsure, or to feel your life has lost purpose, or to be depressed, or have feelings of loneliness. These are normal feelings,”
“The sad reality with euthanasia and assisted suicide is that these normal feelings, once killing is legal, can become a death request, rather than a normal process of being human.”

Charles Bentz

Charles Bentz

Oregon Dr. Charles Bentz is just one example among many. His patient, an avid outdoorsman, was diagnosed with cancer, and became depressed. Dr. Bentz’ was asked to approve the assisted suicide death of his patient.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute… What’s going on? Let’s talk about this,” Dr. Bentz recounted. But his colleague “must have found someone else, because two weeks later his patient was dead from an overdose of a medication.”
“So my colleague saw a patient with depression, but instead of addressing his depression, she gave him the means to kill himself.”
Dr. Bentz’ experience is not unique.

In the Netherlands, a woman in her twenties suffering from post-traumatic stress was given a lethal injection –despite her documented improvement after therapy. Doctors even admitted that a request for death could be really a cry for help. The woman’s therapy “was temporarily partially successful,” yet she was killed anyway.

Another healthy woman was euthanized because she and her deceased husband had agreed not to go on living after one of them died. She was granted a lethal injection, even though she “did not feel depressed at all. She ate, drank and slept well. She followed the news and undertook activities.”

In 2014, a healthy Italian woman was killed at a Swiss suicide clinic because she was depressed over how she looked.

Rosie DiManno

Rosie DiManno
The Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno explains what happens when someone falls into dark despair.
“The ‘black dog’ clinical depression…locks on with pit bull jaws. And you forget that it will pass or at least abate. In the moment, it feels unendurable. Sometimes, you want to die.”
DiManno reasons that clinical depression clouds one’s thinking, and therefore depressed patients should not be candidates for assisted suicide. She says:

“Descending into that dark place where hopelessness – and psychical fatigue, really, just so damn tired of misery – renders rational thought impossible”

Enabling suicide is the opposite of medical treatment. All the more so for depressed patients.

DiManno criticizes Belgium and the Netherlands –which now kill non-terminal people suffering from “incurable distress”— as “knocking off the depressed, because that’s what they want, as if the deeply disconsolate can possibly make an informed decision.”

“Among those “approved’’ for death have been people with autism, anorexia, borderline personality disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, partial paralysis, manic depression, Alzheimer’s and a 24-year-old transgender man devastated by the failure of a sex-change surgery. None of these patients was dying. They just feel real bad… They were morbidly disconsolate and frail of mind. Which is a far sight from terminally ill and dying.”

Denise Batters

Senator Denise Batters

Canada also legalized euthanasia for “psychological suffering.” Canadian Senator Denise Batters, whose husband died by suicide, spoke against assisted suicide for depression.

“The committee did not require that illness be terminal or life-threatening. It included psychological suffering as grounds for physician-assisted death — without any requirement to consult a psychiatrist. It even recommended extending physician-assisted suicide to…those under 18.”
The New York Times ran an article pointing out that,
“According to psychiatric experts, the vast majority of people requesting suicide are suffering from treatable depression, and no longer want to kill themselves once their underlying depression is resolved.”

“Once the depression lifts and people can think more clearly, the therapists say, those who were determined to kill themselves are thankful to be alive, despite their pain or grim prognosis.”
Senator Batters argued.
“The preservation of hope for mentally ill people is absolutely paramount,”

“Those who endure psychological suffering need our support,our resources and our promise that we will never give up on them, even when they can see no other option but to give up on themselves.”

An analysis of Maine’s new so-called “Death With Dignity” law noted that“severely depressed or mentally ill patients can receive assisted suicide without having any form of counseling.”
Indeed, there is nothing in existing Maine law (or Oregon, Washington, or Vermont law) that requires doctors to refer patients to a therapist in order to screen for treatable depression or mental illness before enabling their suicide.

Society’s response to depression in the elderly or in youth or for people with disabilities must not be to enable their death, but to reach out to them on a personal level, and connect them to people and activities that restore a sense of being loved and wanted.

Instead, the number of suicides keeps growing, along with the rising rates of depression. Our Western culture canonizing individualism only exacerbates the depression epidemic.

The Center for Disease Control documented that between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate in America increased in every state (except Nevada, which remained in the top ten states for suicide).

Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic reports that one in three Americans over 45 identifies as chronically lonely. One survey found: “One in four Americans (27 percent) rarely or never feels as though there are people who really understand them. Two in five Americans…feel that they are isolated from others (43 percent). One in five people report they rarely or never feel close to people (20 percent) or feel like there are people they can talk to (18 percent).”Signs of depression include feelings of helplessness or hopelessness, a loss of interest in daily activities, and a loss of energy. A severely depressed person my also idealize suicide by talking about self-harm, becoming pre-occupied with death, or saying things like “everyone would be better off without me.”

Schadenberg reveals
“Society can reduce the scourge of suicide and the cultural abandonment associated with assisted suicide by caring for and being with others at their time of need,”
“It is essential that people who feel their life lacks value or purpose, or feel no one cares, are offered purpose, support and genuine hope from their significant community.”

Schadenberg concludes.
“Suicide is a symptom of mental illness, not a cure for it,”
“The answer is not only talking about it, the answer is inclusion, caring and being with others as they journey through the difficult times of their lives.”

Tom Mortier

Tom Mortier
Tom Mortier, who wasn’t informed of his mother’s death until the day after a doctor killed her for being depressed commented
“The big problem in our society is that we have apparently lost the meaning of taking care of each other,”

Professor Gregory Crawford of the Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine for the Royal Australian College of Physicians emphasized that people asking to die often need to be diagnosed and treated for depression. He relayed an example of one of his terminal patients who wanted to die. He treated her for severe depression by changing her medication, and
“She made a miraculous improvement, both physically and psychologically. She improved and lived for another 12 months. She had serious, progressive disease but her physical function and her ability to interact and live improved. She went off on a holiday, achieved some other things on her wish list and made lots of other nice memories for her family. She died at home, supported by our palliative care.”
Crawford concluded.
“It showed me that sometimes the symptoms of impending death and the symptoms of advanced depression can look very much the same,”

Andrew Lawton

Andrew Lawton
Another example is Canadian media personality Andrew Lawton. He shared.“Nearly seven years ago I overdosed on dozens of pills — causing multiple cardiac arrests and weeks in hospital on life support,”
“Everything from the method to the date and time was meticulously thought out… I’m sure I could have sold my own suicide given how convinced I was that it was the right call. That wouldn’t have made it any less flawed a conclusion.”
Lawton continued
“Suicidal people are irrational… This is true even when decisions appear to be made through logic and reason.”

“I appeared normal, despite not thinking normally. I saw suicide as the answer to pain I was convinced wouldn’t abate. I had tried myriad therapies, medications, and treatment throughout my years-long battle with depression. By the time I tried to pull the plug on my own existence, none had made an impact.”
After Lawton’s nearly successful suicide attempt, his attitude changed. Healing didn’t happen overnight, he says, and his circumstances didn’t change — “but my outlook did.”

“In 2010, no one could have told me happiness was possible. Today, I am married to the love of my life, working in a successful career, and able to look forward each day — all just a few years after I signed my own death warrant.”
People who are depressed are in the middle of, as Alcoholics Anonymous puts it, “stinking thinking.” They need help out of their depression, not the enabling and furthering of their mental darkness by assisted death.

Senator Batters points out the fallacy in suicide as a treatment for depression. She argues
“Physical and psychological illnesses are (not) the same,”“Psychological suffering on its own is not terminal. It is usually treatable.”
Lawton agrees.
“Mental and physical illness can’t be lumped into one category,”
“When illness is in the mind, rather than the body, it calls any decision into question — an irreversible one all the more so.”
Batters adds,

“Delivering the means to suicide straight into the hands of mentally ill individuals directly contradicts the suicide prevention standard in the mental health field.”
Lawton concludes.

“The role of health-care practitioners is…not to enable one’s disordered thinking by killing them,”
“State-sanctioned death doesn’t help the mentally ill — it robs them of a chance for healing.”
Another problem with legalizing suicide for depressed people is there is no legal standard for “unbearable suffering” or “incurable depression.”

A major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry concluded, “There is no evidence base to operationalize ‘unbearable suffering,’ there are no prospective studies of decision-making capacity in persons seeking EAS for psychiatric reasons, and the prognosis of patients labeled as ‘treatment-resistant depression’ varies considerably, depending on the population and the kind of treatments they receive.”

The British Medical Journal also published a study which concluded, “‘Unbearable suffering’ has not yet been defined adequately.”

Schadenberg explains.“People ask for euthanasia because they have lost hope. They may be in depression or experiencing distress, darkened by their reality, and feel that life has lost its purpose or value,”
“In the past, doctors took this request to die as a cry for help, and they tried to find out what their patient needs to weather his or her overwhelming difficulty… I want a physician who will protect my life when I’m going through my deepest darkest times. When I’m going through that physical, psychological, emotional, or existential distress and I’m so darkened that I can’t see beyond my own difficulty, I need a physician who will say ‘no’ to me and will care for me, not kill me.”

Assisted suicide and euthanasia are not about freedom for the sufferer; it’s about abandoning the patient –particularly patients in despair.
]]>7489Joint Bank Accountshttps://elderadvocates.ca/joint-bank-accounts/
Mon, 15 Jul 2019 21:15:34 +0000http://elderadvocates.ca/?p=7481Financial institutions such as banks, credit unions and trust companies may offer customers the option to set up a joint account.
When the phrase “joint bank account” or “joint account” is used in this brochure it refers to joint accounts at financial institutions.

WHAT IS A JOINT ACCOUNT?

Joint accounts are bank accounts in which two or more people have ownership rights over the same account.
These rights include the right for all account holders to:
– deposit,
– withdraw,
– deal with the funds in the account,
– no matter who puts the money into the account.

HOW DOES A JOINT ACCOUNT WORK?

1) As a joint account holder, you share equal access to the account and responsibility for all the transactions made through
the account.

2) In most cases, unless you state otherwise, the other account holder can make transactions without your consent.

3) In some cases, it may be possible to specify that the consent of all joint account holders is required to access the funds in the account.

4) In many cases, joint accounts include the right of survivorship. This means that if one of the account holders dies, the surviving account holder becomes the owner of the account, with the right to deposit, withdraw, and deal with the funds in the account.

5) However, in some cases this could be challenged by others who may think they have an interest in the money in the account as an inheritance. The surviving joint account holder may have to demonstrate that the deceased account holder intended the remaining funds be a gift to the joint account holder. This could potentially lead to delays in the surviving account holder being able to access funds in the account

A FEW THINGS TO CONSIDER:

• If one of the account holders has unpaid debt, the funds in your joint account may be used to pay that debt
• You’re responsible for all account fees, including any fees (like overdraft fees) incurred by other joint account holders
• You may lose full control of your money; depending on your account privileges, your joint account holders can withdraw all funds from the account without your permission
• You lose privacy because your joint account holders can view your account transactions
• In the case of a marital breakdown of one of the joint account holders, the account could be considered a matrimonial asset and divided accordingly
• One must understand that there is always a chance that the other account holder could misuse their authority.

•

ASSISTING WITH MONEY MANAGEMEMT
As we all age, there might come a time when we need help with managing our money. In fact, recent research shows that one of the first signs of cognitive decline is the inability to manage finances..

Alternatives to joint accounts:
a) CONVENIENCE ACCOUNT: These accounts allow someone, whom you have authorized, to use it for your benefit. It’s similar to having a financial power of attorney, but for only one bank account. The person can make transactions on your convenience account but doesn’t inherit the money from the account, and you are still the sole owner of the account, so the money would be protected from the other person’s creditors.

b) MONITORING A BANK ACCOUNT:
Rather than using a joint account as a way to allow another to watch your account for fraud, consider opening a view-only account. A view-only account allows you to give someone you trust, like a loved one, the ability to monitor your account without having access to the money.
View-only access could be as simple as receiving an extra bank statement in the mail or asking your bank to provide online access without the ability to make a transaction.

]]>7481Mental Capacityhttps://elderadvocates.ca/mental-capacity/
Mon, 15 Jul 2019 20:56:34 +0000http://elderadvocates.ca/?p=7471Having the mental capacity required for making an Enduring Power of Attorney means that you:

• know what property you have and its approximate value;

• are aware of your obligations to the people who depend on you financially;

• know what authority you are giving to your Attorney;

• know that your Attorney is required to account for the decisions they make about your financial affairs;

• know that, as long as you are mentally capable, you can revoke (cancel) your EPA;

• understand that if your Attorney does not manage your property well, its value may decrease; and
• understand that there is always a chance that your Attorney could misuse their authority.